Paul Ralston

by Mary Jane Holmes

“I am sorry I left you in the dark so long,” he said.

“I didn’t know it was dark,” Paul replied, glancing at the window and surprised to see a star shining through it.

“Yes, it grows dark early now, and your supper is late, as we didn’t expect company. Sarah Jane has taken a heap of pains with it. Here it comes,” Stevens said, nodding towards the door, where his wife stood, holding a large tray filled with the most appetizing food she could think of.

Broiled chicken and coffee and peaches and cream, such as she had never taken to a prisoner before. Paul was no ordinary charge. He had always had a pleasant word for her, and once, when she was in town without an umbrella and a heavy rain was falling, he had taken her home in his covered phaeton. “Just as if I was a lady,” she said, and she never forgot the attention. Now he was there in jail, and she was more sorry for him than she had ever been for any one in her life. Like the most of the people she did not believe he intended to kill Jack Percy, and she wondered he did not say so.

“I hope you will enjoy your supper,” she said, putting the tray upon the table and pouring his coffee for him.

He was young and he was hungry, and he ate with a keener appetite than he would have thought possible half an hour ago. He was naturally very social; he never liked to be alone, and the presence of the jailer and his wife was company and made the place less dreary. His head was less hot and dizzy, and he talked calmly of the calamity which had overtaken him so suddenly.

“Nobody believes you meant to do it, and when you tell just how it was, things will be easier,” Mrs. Stevens ventured to say, as she poured him a second cup of coffee.

Paul looked at her quickly and asked: “They mean that I am to say I shot him by mistake, not knowing he was there, and get off that way?”

“Yes, that’s about it,” Mrs. Stevens replied, and Paul continued: “Then I shall never get off. I know no more of the shooting than you do. I was not there.”

Mrs. Stevens looked distressed and puzzled. If Paul persisted in this statement she did not know what could save him from State’s Prison at least, if not from a worse fate, and her face was very grave as she took up the tray and carried it from the room. Her husband had gone out before her, and Paul was again alone. He knew the door had not yet been locked, and he could get out if he chose. But he did not choose. The fit of frenzy had passed, leaving him stunned and apathetic. The lamp was burning very dimly, and he could still see the star looking at him through the window, and began to recall his knowledge of astronomy and try to think what star it was and in what constellation. It was very bright, and reminded him first of Clarice’s eyes,—then of Elithe’s,—then it was his mother looking at him, and he was nodding in his chair when the rusty old key in the padlock outside aroused him, and he awoke to find his father and Tom in the room, their arms full of bundles, which they put down one by one. Soft pillows and bed linen, towels and a rug and articles for the toilet, with his dressing gown and slippers, and a large hand mirror. This was Tom’s idea. Indeed, nearly everything was his idea. His quick eyes had noted the bareness of the room,—the absence of everything to which Paul was accustomed, and he had suggested to the judge that they take a few necessaries that night and furnish square the next day. The judge was thinking more of the safety of Paul and how to secure it than of present animal comfort, but he assented to Tom’s proposal and said: “Do what you like. I don’t seem able to think of but one thing,—how to prove my boy innocent,—and of my poor wife.”